Author's note: I wrote everything below the break earlier this morning. Since then, we've:
1) Been pulled over twice by Serbian police officers. One included a "roadside cost."
2) Gotten lost along the Serbia/Romania border for a couple of hours, driving through countless small towns (bonus: sightseeing).
3) We found the border about the same time we got a flat tire. At least the border police were awesome and helped us out with a tire pump.
4) Hobbled our way from the border into the first small Romanian town. We lucked ourselves into a great little mechanic shop where they fixed our tire for 5 Euros. Warm welcome.
5) Feeling emboldened by such positive first impression of Romania, our driver, Jonas, decided to circumvent Timisoara on the way to Arad by skipping north on a "shortcut." Especially rocky roads ensued.
6) Played a show in Arad, Romania largely for the benefit of a couple of awesome people from Sweden (thanks a lot, Josefin and Marten – we'll see you up your way asap).
But before all that…
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Hello, world. We've been busy and all sorts of Internet-less. But we're alive/breathing/kicking and very much enjoying the tour.
There's some catching up to do:
Since Basel, we've traveled quite a bit. First, back through Germany – hitting Koblenz and Stuttgart and Nunchritz. A big nod to the Apparat crew in Koblenz for being champs (and letting us play a bit past curfew due to our late arrival…due to our first – and hopefully only – run in with the German authorities); to the Kap Tormentoso/Stuttgart gang for being a blast and dealing with me while I got repeatedly electrocuted by the microphone (…that was great), and for loaning us their dear, dear Jonas (from Kill Valmer – the opening band) as our driver/roadie extraordinaire for the remainder of the tour; and to the Nunchritz folks for the killer food, the excellent company, the great lineup (The Epidemics from Sweden = especially sweet) and the cherry-flavored headache juice that almost put an end to me (thanks, Mathilda).
After the show in Nunchritz, we pulled an all-nighter and got on the road at 5am bound for Plzen in the Czech Republic (thanks to a scheduled 12pm load-in time at the Open Air festival there). We pulled up to the festival in the middle of a heavy downpour and loaded in as quickly as possible. I then took a bit of hangover-nap in the van before we hit the main stage at 2pm. Show was fun, but the rain was a bit of a damper (on the upside, singing to a crowd 2/3 cloaked in giant pink parkas is strangely entertaining).
We hung around the festival for the afternoon, tried some "Tree Cake" (highly, highly recommended) and a bunch of Czech beer (same) and then went back to a nearby hotel to recuperate (and attempt to air dry my laundry – long-story-short: we all did laundry in Stuttgart, except most of mine never made it to the dryer…so I'm carting around/slowly destroying about ¾ of my sopping-wet clothing, even now…I think I may be ditching my wardrobe in Romania).
From Plzen, we headed out for Babice, Czech Republic. Ales, the promoter, greeted us with vegan goulash and bottles of beer, and the was held in a community center/theatre. The opening band, Safety First, was awesome – instrumental math rock that reminded us of our old hometown favorites The Cancer Conspiracy. Post-show we drank in a local pub before crashing out at a nearby hostel (thanks for setting it all up, Ales).
The following morning we rolled out towards Slovakia for that evening's show at the Colloseum in Kosice. The club was awesome, but we got a bit an interesting warning on arrival: "if you don't want it stolen, take it out of your van." Point taken – but the club has apartments for the bands upstairs, so we were able to load all our luggage to a safe spot (and all our gear to a locked backstage area). Post load-in, we wandered nearby streets for awhile. Beautiful city. Show itself was a blast (and the only other band, Birds in Row from France, was awesome), and we finished the night off by bar hopping with the promoters (Tomas and Martin) and a few new friends around the city.
The next day was our only day off on this entire run. We needed it. We started out late en route to Budapest where we planned to see a Tragedy show and hang out with a friend and – hopefully future promoter – Meg. Drive was uneventful – but our late start meant a late arrival, so we met up with Meg at the show. Awesome venue, with a lounge area and wireless internet. We made ourselves at home, drank up and watched a few louder-than-bombs bands. Afterwards, Meg directed us back to her apartment, helped us park and fed us some in-the-running-for-best-food-of-the-tour homemade soup (so good, in fact, that she helped me pick up a bit of the key ingredient, a hot sauce called Eros Pista, to bring back to the States). Perfect night off.
The next morning Meg, Tina (an Austrian girl that tour-manager/Flix Records guy Felix knows) and another friend of Meg's showed us around Budapest, and then we had to pack up and head out for Novi Sad, Serbia for the show at CK 13. The border crossing was a bit rocky (as are the roads), but we made it into the country with not too much trouble. Finding the club in Novi Sad proved to be a bit more difficult, and we had many, many broken-English-and-or-German conversations as we tried to suss out where the "black house" was.
We finally made it – it's a community center/arts space, and it's awesome. They put us up upstairs, and the sound system was one of the best of the tour. Dan, the show's organizer, brought us a killer dinner of pasta and vegan "meat" sauce. The set ended in two encores, and then we wandered the city with a group of the people from the show. Great night.
Now this morning, I've got a throbbing headache and we're on our way to Arad, Romania. Can't wait.
At the end of all of this, we're going to put together a tour video with live performances and many Adam-related shenanigans. We can't promise life-changing greatness, but we can likely guarantee some level of entertainment.
xo
The Static Age